Res. No. 352
A Resolution calling on the United States Congress to pass, and the President to sign, H.R. 3562, the DEFIANCE Act of 2025, to provide a federal civil cause of action for victims of non-consensual intimate digital forgeries.
By Council Members Farías, Brooks-Powers, Won, Gutiérrez, Brewer, Louis, Maloney, Joseph and Ung
Whereas, Digital forgeries, often called deepfakes, are synthetic images and videos that look realistic; and
Whereas, The creation of digital forgeries has been made accessible to the general public through hundreds of applications that require no specialized technical skill; and
Whereas, Due to a lack of guardrails, digital forgery technology is increasingly being used to non-consensually generate sexually explicit content that manipulates the likenesses of real individuals; and
Whereas, The generation of non-consensual digital forgeries is a severe violation of privacy as victims face a total loss of agency over their own likenesses; and
Whereas, Digital forgeries of this kind are increasingly being used as weapons for targeted harassment, jeopardizing the victims' employment, education, and physical safety, or serve as tools for extortion, domestic violence, and sexual assault; and
Whereas, Whether used as a weapon or not, the trauma associated with these forgeries often results in social rupture both in person and online, as victims may lose the ability to trust their peers and community out of fear of social stigma, and withdraw from digital platforms and public discourse to mitigate further harassment; and
Whereas, Non-consensual sexual imagery, including digital forgeries, have real impacts on victims’ mental health as it has been associated with anxiety, depressive disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder, and suicidality; and
Whereas, In 2025, Researchers from the Oxford Internet Institute identified 35,000 publicly downloadable “deepfake model variants” and found that 96% of these models targeted identifiable women and that the women targeted by these models ranged from globally recognized celebrities to social media users with relatively small followings; and
Whereas, In a recent incident starting late December 2025 the Grok chatbot, built into the social media platform X, previously known as Twitter, generated and posted 4.4 million images, of which at least 41 percent were sexualized images of women, according to the New York Times, flooding the platform with intimate digital forgeries; and
Whereas, A 2025 report by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene found the widespread use of social media platforms, such as X, across age groups in New York City; and
Whereas, This widespread use of social media puts millions of New Yorkers, especially women, at risk of being victims of non-consensual intimate digital forgeries; and
Whereas, H.R.3562, also known as the DEFIANCE Act of 2025, was introduced by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the companion bill, S.1837, was introduced by Senator Richard Durbin, to establish a federal civil cause of action for victims of non-consensual digital forgeries, providing them with the right to sue those who knowingly produce, possess, disclose, or solicit such content and outlining essential privacy protections during litigation; and
Whereas, This legislation would protect New Yorkers and Americans across the country from the harmful effects of intimate digital forgeries and provide victims recourse against the perpetrators of these acts; now, therefore, be it
Resolved, That the Council of the City of New York calls upon the United States Congress to pass, and the President to sign, H.R. 3562, the DEFIANCE Act of 2025, to provide a federal civil cause of action for victims of non-consensual intimate digital forgeries.
EB
LS #21678
02/11/2026